1. Technical Field
The present teaching relates to methods, systems, and programming for network detection and switching and systems incorporating the same.
2. Discussion of Technical Background
With the advancement of telecommunication technologies, information access via wireless means has become more and more ubiquitous, whether indoor or outdoors. Installation of distributed cell towers as well as the ability of network operators to handle calls from users serviced by other operators have made wireless communication increasingly seamless. However, situations still exist where users can not consistently have a quality connection. One of such situations is indoor cellular coverage. There may be a variety of reasons for poor reception in an indoor setting. For instance, in a building residing in, e.g., a densely populated region, signals between a cellular device and a tower may encounter many obstacles along the signal transmission path. Although signals may reach the intended destination, the strength of the signal may be so weakened that the received signal is not usable.
Efforts have been made to improve the quality of communication in such situations. For instance, a wireless network extender, a device often referred to as a femto cell, is a solution adopted to enhance indoor cellular coverage in order to provide more reliable wireless service. Such a wireless network extender or femto cell works like a miniature cell tower in an indoor environment (e.g., home or office). A femto cell usually is easy to install. For instance, it can be simply plugged into an existing Internet connection. The wireless network extender then communicates with its home operator's network via Internet connections. In this manner, a wireless device communicates with the femto cell, which then channels the communication back and forth between the wireless device and the operator's network via the Internet connection. With this solution, to a wireless device, a femto cell is almost indistinguishable from a macro base station.
Traditionally, to enable a wireless device to detect that it is being served by a femto cell, the wireless device is configured so that it is capable of recognizing a femto cell when it enters into the coverage area of a femto cell. This can be done by configuring the wireless device with identifiers for femto cells that are in deployment so that whenever the device enters an area in which any of the configured identifiers is detected, the device is aware that it is now in the coverage area of a femto cell. Such identifiers include radio frequency (RF) identifiers such as cell identifiers, system and network identifiers, PN offsets, and other information conveyed in RF to determine femto deployment.
The traditional solution is depicted in FIG. 1. A network configuration 100 includes a first network such as a cellular service network 120, a second network such as the Internet 140, an indoor environment 130, one or more wireless devices, e.g., device 110 (in motion) and 145. Wireless devices are connected via the first network 120, e.g., operated by network operator(s). The first network 120 includes a plurality of base stations, e.g., 125, 135, and a femto serving switch and support systems 160, which is responsible for handling femto cell operations. As can be seen, the wireless device 110 is configured to have identifiers designated to femto cells. In addition, in the indoor environment 130, there are femto cells (FC) 150 and 155 deployed, both of which are capable of communicating with a home router 170 connected to the second network or Internet 140.
In operation, when wireless device 110 is at a first position A, it communicates, e.g., with wireless device 145, via the first network or cellular service network 120. Signals from wireless device 110 are transmitted to a nearby base station, e.g., 125, and through the cellular service network 120, the signals are routed to wireless device 145 via, e.g., a different base station 135. When wireless device 110 travels from position A to position B, it may enter into a femto cell coverage area (e.g., the indoor environment 130). When the wireless device 110 detects, based on the configured identifiers for femto cells, that it enters into a femto cell coverage area, the subsequent communication may now be handled by a detected femto cell, e.g., 150. In this mode of operation, the wireless device 110 communicates with the femto cell 150, which communicates with the femto serving switch/support systems 160 via the home router 170 and the Internet connection 140. The signal exchanges between wireless device 110 and wireless device 145 are now relayed via femto cells, the femto serving switch/support systems, and the first network 120.
This conventional solution has some drawbacks. When the deployment of femto cells grows, more and more identifiers need to be dedicated to femto cells. More and more identifiers need to be configured in a wireless device. In addition, for a wireless device that has been configured with fewer identifiers, there is no easy way to update the configuration of such an existing device. Furthermore, the network operator currently has no means to provide a device with information related to specific femto cells associated with the device at any particular time. Therefore, there is a need to provide a better solution to assist a wireless device to operate in a femto cell coverage and a cellular network coverage.